Sorry just getting caught up on this thread, but the varnish-vs-UOA question is a fascinating one.
If the engine is varnished but is clean on all the *functional* surfaces, does it matter? Is there any test for ACEA or API or ILSAC that address varnishing on non-functional surfaces? It seems to me that there are deposits that matter and deposits that don't. Lots of whales live quite long and happy lives completely encrusted with barnacles.
As I've posted, the J35 in my 2005 Odyssey had become very heavily varnished over years of using entry-level oils like PP with the VCM still active and changing by OLM.
But if compression is good, oil consumption is very low and all other indicators are fine, does the varnish matter?
I don't know. I don't like varnish. I like that VRP is removing it. But if it wasn't removed, I can't say it would amount to much that I can measure. It just looks bad and nothing more.
And I have no idea how a UOA could flag varnish or not varnishing. It seems by nature that the oil you are sampling was that which didn't react to form varnish, so how could UOA ever flag varnishing tendency?
UOA won't tell you about varnish, and that's a problem IMHO.
The thing with varnish is what it is: a precipitate; contaminants that fall out of suspension because the additive package is no longer able to keep them in suspension (the detergents and dispersants, whose role is to prevent agglomeration of suspended contaminants and keep them in suspension, are overwhelmed). Varnish most readily accrues in areas of low flow, though lower temperatures (valve covers for example) are also prime targets. The ring pack has a low rate of flow through it, so an oil that is already fully saturated with contaminants is going to be far less resistant to coking and leaving deposits in the ring land area, primarily the oil control rings.
Back in the early 2000's a buddy of mine had a pretty heavily varnished 302 that we tore down to rebuild. It was running one of the stock heads from my engine because it broke a valve spring and burned a valve on nitrous at the track one night. My engine had a better maintenance history (I had been running M1 in it) and the heads were spotless. So he had one super clean head and one that was varnish city when we tore it down, lol.
We knew his engine was tired, as he had to run 20W-50 in it to keep normal oil pressure (GTX 20W-50). We expected the bearings to not look great and we were on the money, they were all to the copper.
However, what surprised me was that all of the rings were sticky, with the oil control rings basically glued into their lands with varnish. The compression rings moved, though not all that freely, and the engine still had decent compression, but the oil control rings were not functioning properly, if it all.
So, my concern with varnish is that if you have it where you can see it, the odds are incredibly high that you also have it where you can't. Some engines are going to be considerably more tolerant of this than others, like that old 302, while others are going to drink oil or manifest the impact in other ways.
Varnish is never *good*, but in some applications its impact may not be readily quantified, as operation doesn't seem obviously impacted by its presence.